


you left your smile behind

by threedices



Series: KHR Rare Pair Week 2018 [8]
Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Angst with a Happy Ending, Breaking Up & Making Up, Elena is a Norn, Gen, Getting Back Together, Giotto is a Prometheus-inspired god, Immortality, Second Chances, Witch Daemon Spade, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-23
Updated: 2018-06-23
Packaged: 2019-05-27 01:35:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15013823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threedices/pseuds/threedices
Summary: To Daemon, Elena was the love of a lifetime. But for the Fates, loves and lifetimes are different things than for a mortal. Giotto was never a safer choice, but at least he never left.He never forgot Elena and the truth is, neither did she.Sometimes you have to discard your humanity to be happy.





	you left your smile behind

> _“It only takes a split second to smile and forget, yet to someone that needed it, it can last a lifetime.”_  
>  _― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free_

 

Daemon had been coming into his powers as a witch recently, full of the idealism that accompanied youth and had bargained for allowance to go to one of the gathering of the gifted that his father often attended.  
He was deeply disappointed when many of the old and learned and wise he met there were so small minded and petty.

It did not get better, he found, with his attendance of further gatherings.

Daemon considered it a fortunate happening, though, that Elena was nearby when he said:  
“Sometimes, I just want to poison them all.“

“Oh," she had said, "that is quite the undertaking. How do you intend to accomplish this feat?“

She had smiled, half honey, half hidden sharpness, and raised an eyebrow.  
“No one will sell you that amount of poison.“

They had gazed at the people present, a great mix of the supernatural and the mighty, the gifted and the greedy.

Daemon had sneered with all the arrogance of youth and judged them.

“Who knows?“ he had told her, lightly but with the will to impress, “maybe I will simply mix my own?”

She had laughed and laid her hand on his arm.

“You should be careful with what you say.“

She had given him a significantly look.

That was how they met.

She stood by him and had kept him company on several such gatherings.  
He found the sycophants and hypocrites easier to handle, with her beside him.

As the third drew near, she had visited him and asked him to accompany her.

“I would like to introduce you to someone.” Her eyes had been serious and darker with it.

He had nodded and waited for her to elaborate.

She smiled her carefully hidden smile, with the honey and the thorns.  
“You might like him.”

Ah. He admitted to a touch of jealousy, then, but she only laughed about it.

Red faced, he had tried to gather his dignity around himself.  
“If you think it wise, I will of course go along with it.”

Elena had been radiant, then, the smile on her lips both filled with love and indulgence.

“Of course you will,” she had said with affection.

She had kissed him on the forehead, standing on tip toes for it.

He had decided to give up on any dignity by then, and embraced her and rested his head on her shoulder.  
She carefully patted his head.

“This will be great, Daemon, I know it.“

He had known of her abilities as a seer, clairvoyance the likes of which was rare in a witch, so he believed her.

She introduced him to Giotto, who was quite literally a god among men, stepped down to the mortals to protect them, and Daemon was struck rather hard.

With awe, with speechlessness, maybe even .. with love.

Elena stood beside them the whole time, watching Daemon with her small secretive smile, when he remembered to look at her again.

When they were alone, he tried to apologize, but she was lenient.

“It is quite natural. Giotto is a beauty full of natural charisma. She laughed at his grimace. Did you know he ascended first, before he came down to aid the mortals.“

He didn’t see the significant detail in her words at that moment.

She never said ‘us mortals’.

Years later, after he thought her dead and almost broke with Giotto over it, found her again and sought her out.

And asked her his most burning question.  
“Why?“

Her smile was kind and wistful. As if she was very far from him.  
“You never asked what I was, Daemon, my love. I am one of the fates, the Norns, I could not bear to stay and watch you die.”

“I didn’t ask,” he said, slightly breathless with heartbreak and betrayal the incredulity of it all.

“No,” she answered, turning her eyes away from what he had become, “you didn’t.”

He had been the strongest, darkest witch among humanity’s sorcerers, the greatest for many generations.

For a moment, brilliant and white hot searing in its agony, he wondered if she was repulsed by what he had become, by him.

Or, he thought with grief, if his being caused her immortal form pain in its unnaturalness.

“I loved you,“ she said into the void between them, “never doubt that.” She turned to him again and her smile was soft and gentle and touched with sadness. “It is all I can give you, Beloved. I’m sorry.”

Then she kissed him, and was gone, her magic like gale and the wind’s soft touch.

He could not find her again, however much he searched.

All his power, all his darkness, and he was not able to find the woman he still loved so much, despite everything.

It came to him then, as a horrible realization, that she had let him find her, not the other way around.

Something in Daemon broke with that knowledge and he did not truly fight it when Giotto came to collect Daemon.

“I didn’t know,” Daemon said, his voice lost and broken.

Giotto grimaced.

“It was so obvious to me,” he said, full of contrition. “I’m sorry, Daemon. I would have asked her to tell you, if I had known she never did.”

And because his heart was broken and Giotto was the only constant thing in his world, after all these years, Daemon went with him.

He was vulnerable, he knew, but that was not an excuse. he wanted to search for her further, but he felt only exhaustion.

It was only an explanation, for why he crawled into Giotto’s bed, needing the contact.

Giotto was no less lonely, having outlived all the humans he loved and being exiled for his aid to humanity. Apart from Daemon, who had prolonged his life with unnatural means, there were only graves and those who shunned Giotto.  
Giotto was still well liked among people, though few knew him as his first followers had.  
There were whispers that he had been cursed to give his affection only to that which he would watch die.

Daemon had not lingered with Giotto, because he had searched and searched with all his skill and determination to find Elena.  
Until he did, and almost wished he hadn’t.

He never gave the rumours much thought, or wondered why Giotto never thought out the supernaturals who could withstand the wrath of the gods.

Giotto kept to himself, taking no lovers and never straying far from the home he had made among mortals.

It seemed inevitable that Daemon would get attached. There was simply no one else he had to return to.

In his darker moments, Daemon wondered if he was meant to fall for the unattainable.

Because Giotto was not one of the Fates, but as a god close enough to count.

One day, Giotto kissed him gently and it nearly broke Daemon.

“I wasn’t sure, but I just felt... “ Giotto made a face, as if the emotions were too many, too much, too difficult to give voice.

Daemon felt mostly numb loss and grief still, but he thought that he would have understood if he had felt less hollowed out, so he kissed Giotto back.  
With far more fervour than Giotto had kissed him, surprising even himself a little, and all the hunger of his destroyed heart, that howled in his chest like a wounded thing.

Loving a god was no less foolish than loving a Norn, but at least with Giotto Daemon had always known.

Loving Giotto was foolish and familiar.

In a way, Daemon had fallen already and just never gotten up.

But being loved by Giotto in return was a warm, soothing thing.  
It soothed something in Daemon, the broken part of him that had never quite recovered from Elena, her loss and her truth.

It took years, decades, but his bruised heart, and he could admit it now if only to himself, his bruised pride, no longer made him ill with pain, when he saw Elena again. The longing never truly went away, only gentled in his heart.

She smiled, a crooked little thing, so sad and small. “I knew you two would get along.”

He looked at her, still as radiant and beautiful as before she had left, and the first word out of his mouth was, “stay,” and he knew he was not over her, not yet, that he would never be.

Elena bit her lip, and in all the time he had known her, it was the first sign of indecision he had ever seen on her.

Giotto chose that moment to step into the room.  
It was their house that they had built in a small village, which they protected together.

The darkness was nearly completely bled out of Daemon.

Was this the reason she had come? To judge him and deem him worthy or not?

Daemon felt his heartbeat in his whole body, it was so loud, deafening.

“Elena,” Giotto said, confused, but obvious in his pleasure to see her. “Will you stay?”

When she opened her mouth, he gestured. “Only for dinner?”

And Daemon could see now, that even the Fates had a small, very small weakness for Giotto’s charms.

Elena relaxed, her smile more open, almost grateful. “Yes, I will.”

She allowed Giotto to lead her to the table.

“Please excuse us for a moment.” And he took hold of Daemon’s arm and dragged him to the kitchen area.

Giotto took a deep breath. “Daemon,” he said, with great seriousness, “we have no food.”

Daemon laughed and would have fallen if Giotto hadn’t caught him.

“Let’s go out, then,” Daemon said, with tears of mirth still clinging to his eyelashes, after he calmed enough to form words.

Giotto hummed and pretended to think about this. “We will do that.”

When they returned to Elena, Giotto made a grand gesture. "Elena,” he told her, “we are going out.”

Giotto and Elena smiled at each other and, watching them, Daemon thought, that everything had changed, but they were unchanged at the core.

The affection and easy camaraderie was still there.

Giotto took Elena’s arm, she dragged Daemon to her side, then they both decided with a look of silent communication, to push and pull Daemon until he was in the middle between them, each of them holding on to one of his arms.

Daemon found he could forgive their manhandling, if only they stayed.


End file.
